Info Edge acquires iimjobs.com

Info Edge (India) Ltd, the operator of jobs site Naukri.com and real estate portal 99acres.com has agreed to acquire the company behind jobs portal iimjobs.com. Mumbai-listed Info Edge said in a stock-exchange filing it will buy Highorbit Careers Pvt. Ltd for Rs 80.82 crore ($11.6 million) in cash.

Info Edge said the proposed acquisition will help it consolidate its position in the online recruitment solutions segment where Naukri.com already has a leadership position. Delhi-based iimjobs.com is focused on middle- to senior-level hiring in fields such as finance, consulting, business process outsourcing, technology, and sales and marketing.

Highorbit was started by Tarun Matta in 2008 as a side project while he was still working with RockeTalk, a multi-platform mobile app. He left RockeTalk in 2010 to focus on the portal full time. An IIM Indore alumnus, Matta previously worked with Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies, CSC, Neilsoft Ltd and ITC Infotech.

The company had raised an undisclosed amount in angel funding from One97 Communications, India Venture Partners, Shailesh Vikram Singh, Pallav Nadhani, Abhishek Rungta, Anand Lunia, Sachin Garg and others in March 2012. In November 2016, iimjobs.com secured $2 million (Rs 13 crore then) in its Series A round of funding led by early-stage investment firm India Quotient. Tracxn Labs and Calcutta Angels also participated in this round.

Scaleworks acquires AI commerce provider SearchSpring

Scaleworks, the San Antonio based private equity firm acquires startups with between $4 Million and $10 Million in annual run rate and works to grow them, while additionally extending 12 – to – 16 month venture loans to B2B businesses as much as 6 times their monthly recurring revenue. Scaleworks bought eight companies with its first $60 million fund, which collectively grew 52% to $80 million in revenue last year.

In February, it launched a second fund — this one totaling $80 million — to snatch up startups with greater than $4 million in ARR, and it announced one of the first acquisition targets today. Scaleworks says it has acquired SearchSpring, a privately funded Colorado-based ecommerce company that provides AI-powered search and navigation products to direct-to-consumer brands like Moen, Kate Somerville, Volcom, Wet Seal, Natori, Bikini.com, Wildfox, Lime Crime, Wine Enthusiast, Charles & Colvard, SaintBernard Sports, and Bethesda Game Studios. Since its founding in 2007, SearchSpring says it has powered over 9.2 billion searches.

SearchSpring’s platform — which integrates with Magento, Shopify, BigCommerce, and Mivaworks — works by ingesting companies’ catalogs, using natural language processing to break terms into their component pieces, and thoroughly indexing those pieces to suss out relationships among them. It’s able to tell the difference between a shirt dress and a dress shirt, for instance, and to correct typos and mistakes in search queries while quietly hiding irrelevant product types and accessories in results.

Moreover, it optionally boosts products with the highest conversion rate to the top and captures shopping behavior to supplement product data. SearchSpring joins recurring payments platform Chargify, content ingestion network provider Filestack, automated user research company Qualaroo, embedded analytics suite Keen, and office mail automation startup Earth Class Mail in Scaleworks’ growing portfolio. Among the firm’s successful exits to date are FollowUp, Mailgun, and Assembla.

Zendesk acquires conversational platform Smooch

Customer service software provider Zendesk revealed that it has acquired Montreal based Smooch the company behind an eponymous business-to-customer messaging platform, for an undisclosed sum. Zendesk also took the wraps off WhatsApp and Slack integrations and announced new apps available through its Zendesk Marketplace.

For the uninitiated, Smooch’s AWS-hosted suite collates messages across web, mobile, and social messaging and combines user activity and existing profile data, enabling admins to create more tailored experiences. With Smooch’s embeddable software development kit and APIs for Android, iOS, and the web, a hotel, for instance, could give guests the ability to ping staff on-property, and an online retailer could manage issues like incorrect shipments and returns across channels.

Smooch supports speech on popular voice assistants, like Amazon’s Alexa and Google Assistant, along with text on WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Line, WeChat, Telegram, Twitter DM, Viber, Kakao Talk, SMS, and Rich Communication Services (RCS). Zendesk notes that Smooch has the distinction of being one of the largest providers of WhatsApp Business integration, which allows organizations to manage and send non-promotional automated messages to customers — like appointment reminders, shipping info, or event tickets — for a fixed rate.

Thanks to Smooch, Zendesk says that customers in its early access program can now reach users directly through Chat, its live chat solution for mobile and the web. Smooch brings real-time push notifications, as well as standard messaging features, like typing indicators, timestamps, cloud message storage, media support (for emojis, GIFs, images, videos, and file attachments), and read and delivery receipts.

Freshworks acquires Natero

Customer engagement service Freshworks which you may still remember under its old name of Freshdesk, has acquired Natero, a customer success service with some AI/ML smarts that helps businesses prevent churn and manage their customers.

The acquisition will help the company complete its mission to provide its users with a 360-degree view of their customers. Freshdesk started out with a focus on customer support and then added additional functionality for marketers and other roles over time. Today, however, companies want this full 360-degree view of a customer and are able to offer differentiated service to their top customers, for example. In many ways, the acquisition of Natero closes the loop here.

Natero will continue to exist as a stand-alone product, but it will also become part of the Freshworks 360 suite, Freshwork’s integrated customer engagement suite. Ahead of today’s acquisition, Natero had raised a total of $3.3 million. That’s not a lot for a startup that launched back in 2012, but Soules noted how he was able to fund the company’s expansion through revenue. The two companies did not disclose the acquisition price.

Spencer to acquire Nature’s Basket

Goenka group owned Spencer Retail Ltd is set to acquire gourmet retail chain Nature’s Basket Ltd for INR 300 crore, as it seeks to expand its footprint in the Western region, the company filings with the BSE show. The acquisition is subject to shareholders approval.

The deal will give Spencer’s access to 36 Nature’s Basket stores in prime locations of Mumbai, Pune and Bengaluru. The Kolkata-based retail chain will also get access to Nature’s Basket’s online platform.

Natures Basket, which began operations in 2005, sells fruits, vegetables, fish and meat, besides fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) and staples. The retail chain is known for stocking up on niche gourmet products, including imported food such as Italy’s Grana Padano Cheese, Blue Cheese, Parma Ham, and bluish-purple chips from the US. It competes with the likes of Future Retail Ltd’s Food Hall, and Alibaba Group-backed Big Basket.

In 2017-18, Nature’s Basket contributed just about ₹291 crore to Godrej Industries’ consolidated revenue of ₹9,968.83 crore, the company’s annual report shows. Spencer’s Retail Ltd, a separate listed entity, had earned total revenue of ₹1,051.81 crore in 2017-18, on a stand-alone basis, according to BSE filings. In 2018-19, it generated a total revenue of ₹2,214.98 crore.

Netflix buys StoryBots

Netflix Inc. acquired the StoryBots children’s media brand as the world’s largest streaming service providers to challenge rival Walt Disney Co.’s kid-friendly online platform scheduled to start in November.

Under the deal, StoryBots creators Gregg and Evan Spiridellis will produce more original content including series and short-form specials, Netflix said Thursday, without disclosing terms. Los Gatos, California-based Netflix has more than 148 million paid subscribers worldwide and spent about $7 billion on programming last year.

Buying StoryBots and expanding its programming may help Netflix draw more children and parents, a battleground market as family-focused Disney plans to start offering movies and shows from its Marvel, Pixar and Star Wars franchises online later this year. Netflix already streams “Ask the StoryBots," which features cylindrical animated characters addressing queries such as “What makes a bird a bird," and “What are good carbohydrates."

While Netflix and Disney square off over families, competition in the broader industry is likely to get even hotter. Apple Inc., AT&T Inc. and Comcast Corp. are also among the cash-rich giants planning streaming services as TV viewers shift away from cable TV to video-on-demand platforms.

Reliance Brands to buy Hamleys

Reliance Brands Ltd, a subsidiary of Reliance Industries Ltd, acquired British toy retailer Hamleys for 620 crore in an all-cash deal. Reliance Brands signed an agreement to acquire a 100% stake in Hamleys Global Holdings Ltd from Hong Kong based C. banner International.

Hamleys, founded in London in 1760, is one of the world’s oldest retailers of toys and has changed hands several times. It was bought in June 2003 by the Baugur Group, an Icelandic investment company. In the same year, Hamleys was delisted from the London stock market by Baugur Group, which had paid $68.8 million for the company. In 2012, it was sold for $78.4 million to France’s Groupe Ludendo. Hamleys reported losses of £12 million in 2017, when it last reported its financials.

Hamleys has 167 stores across 18 countries. In India, Reliance Retail has the master franchise for the brand and operates 88 stores across 29 cities. This worldwide acquisition places Reliance on the frontline of global retail.

Medlife acquires e-pharmacy Myra

Healthcare services platform Medlife International Private Limited has acquired medicine-delivery app Myra Medicines in a cash and stock deal. The acquisition will support Medlife’s pharmacy business and help it accrue profits. At the same time, Medlife will consolidate and strengthen the delivery of medicines and extend the reach to more Indian cities.

It claims to leverage data science and technology to automate a highly operational business their prediction algorithm is able to ensure 95% order fulfillment with just 25 days of inventory holding and delivery costs of fewer than 40 per order achieving near positive unit economics.

The company leverages its express delivery abilities to maintain lowest order level costs. The company claims that its on-demand model is built on the back of a best in class ordering and warehousing system that ensures orders are picked packed and dispatched post compliance and legal in just 5 minutes.

Medlife was founded in 2014 by Kumar and Prashant Singh and began operations with online drug deliveries before expanding into online consultations with medical professionals and diagnostics. The company is currently looking to raise capital from external sources. This is the second reported acquisition that Medlife has made this year. In January, it bought Mumbai-based digital healthcare platform and home diagnostics services company MedLabz for an undisclosed sum.